Woodstone charged the lower court had improperly assessed the value at the lower amount. But the appellate court wrote that after lower court “considered the widely divergent expert valuations submitted by the parties, and conducted a visual inspection of the subject easement, it rejected the opinion of respondents’ expert as being speculative, particularly because it was based on the assumption that Woodstone’s title to the property on which the easement ran was ‘free of any encumbrances and/or defects or liens,’ an assumption for which there was no evidentiary support.”

The road to the access remains open to members of the public, who have been using the road and the reservoir at that spot for more than a year.